We Must Not Think of Ourselves

by Lauren Grodstein

“Our task is to pay attention,” he continued. “To listen to the stories. We want all political backgrounds, all religious attitudes. The illiterate and the elite. Every ideology. Interview everyone. Learn about their lives. I need the best minds here to help.”

For so long, we had lived under the illusion that our lives were still worth something to the broader community of mankind, and even though that illusion was shattered brick by brick (a 5:00 p.m. curfew, no going to the movies, no mailing letters abroad, no libraries, no telephones), we still refused to let go of it.

There should be another word for this feeling—a sort of sorrowful happiness, or a happiness that only deepens someone’s sorrow. The closest I can come to it is the Portuguese word saudade, which nears this feeling but tempers it with nostalgia, a wish for something that was and can never be again. A grieving person lives in a permanent state of saudade, but saudade does not incorporate joy. And grief might be simpler if joy never tried to intrude.

We must not be comfortable. We must not think of ourselves.

I was writing everything down, obviously—but it did strike me that perhaps writing it all down was not the most important thing we could do for ourselves. The most important thing we could do for ourselves was survive. Not just in words, but in actual bodies.

But now I realize that we are creating a portrait of Polish Jews at the end of our history—not one peculiar moment, but the very last moment.

Of all of them, I was the only one left alive. Perhaps that, in the end, was the true nature of the curse.